Reviews for Books, Banks, Buttons: And Other Inventions from the Middle Ages

The average rating for Books, Banks, Buttons: And Other Inventions from the Middle Ages based on 2 reviews is 1.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-04-02 00:00:00 Christopher Paisley This was either written specifically for the lower, single-celled streams of young adolescents entering high school or else the translator is moonlighting here from his day job as the insert writer for Hallmark cards: a marked step down from a career high in the 1980s as the main newshound for Ceefax and Teletext, pumping out 8 bit screen-grabbing, horse race results. However, I don't think anything's been lost in translation from the original Italian. The structure is pick-and-mix, grab a worthy-but-irrelevant quote grandstanding…whilst perched on a very small soapbox in the middle of an empty field somewhere in Umbria. Source material is vomited onto the page in unwieldy chunks that bear no discernible relevance to the subject in hand. The author is playing blindman's bluff in a room full of medieval artworks and manuscripts, grabbing a pseudo-scientific and questionable reference here, a painting there, adding a dollop of literature contorted into empirical fact from the top shelf and then dashing off, leaving the mouldering deposit to pollute the page, as she runs away from the stinking mess to rapidly bamboozle with another tangent. The book blurb begins by describing the Middles ages thusly: 'Once regarded by historians as a period of intellectual stagnation.' The author, ill-advisedly, has decided to side with public perception, embracing the intellectual stagnation theme, perfectly capturing it in form, delivery, expression and content. It's just a mess, however, in the Folio Society version that I purchased, the less than acceptable text is elevated into a hot mess. This edition, aesthetically, would make the angels weep with joy and even give Beelzebub a retinal rapture he wouldn't shake off in a hurry. Such a beautifully produced book with sumptuous illustrations and shimmering reproductions of artwork. Shame that the designers, typographer and illustration researchers put so much effort into such a turgid piece of prose. The dichotomy, the publisher's misplaced efforts (although one has to seriously question the commissioning editor's powers of discrimination), is why I'm giving this one the hairy eyeball. Ideologically, thematically and historically, this has as much structure as a bipolar blancmange. Utterly dire. Far less than the sum of its parts. Avoid at all costs.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-04-06 00:00:00 Sharon White This book is a bit light on substance, though there are some fun anecdotes, and I'm fairly sure a few of the explanations were convenient myths. Many of the entries are far too brief, and too much space is used up by technologies imported but not invented in the European Middle Ages. However, it is a beautiful tome, and the many colored plates, mostly examples of the various inventions as illustrated in medieval art, are interesting and well-chosen. Were it larger it would make a great coffee table book.